Cap-n-Trade Disaster in the Making

Look, libs/lefties/Dems/whatever – I hate being the guy to give you sound advice, but here we go:

You can be the most partisan, life-long member of the Democrat party, you can be the most liberal guy or gal on your block, faithfully subscribing to every left-wing cultural/social/economic belief, you can be the most hardcore believer in the notion that “man-made global warming” is catastrophic and imminent, you can have boundless faith that big government politicians and bureaucrats will always make good and wise decisions whereas markets will always tend towards the banal, foolish or evil, and yet…

AND YET….

You cannot possibly believe that this is how laws should be made and how our beloved country should be governed. You can believe all of the above, and still recoil from the insane, “ram it through without reading it” nature of these bills. You can be trembling with orgasmic glee at the prospects of dialing civilization back to the 18th century, and still be horrified that unread, 1200-page documents will become the law of the land in the blink of an eye.

Sure, be concerned that members of Congress will blindly vote for this thing without having read it. That’s bad. But as a rule, these members of Congress aren’t completely stupid. Why happily vote for a bill when they don’t know what’s in it, and haven’t had time to read or debate or consider it? Seems strange.

Ah, but you see, they don’t have to read it. Because somebody had to read, write and cobble together this monstrosity. That somebody might be a disconnected bunch, each responsible for a separate part, with little awareness of the others, but we can guess at their makeup. Rent-seekers and opportunists of all stripes, politically-favored groups, those with close connections to key lawmakers, anyone with a profit stake in a tremendous power grab by government.

Because legislation formed and passed in this way can only be exactly that: a massive power grab, with the usual corrupt giveaways to those who stand to profit off of our backs, provided that some of that profit be returned to enriching and re-electing politicians who voted for it in the first place. They don’t need to read it to know that they are voting to enrich and empower those who will keep them in power, so vote they will. And those who have read it, who actually know what is in it? They’ll gain great power and wealth, extracted from YOU in the form of taxes, regulation, your freedoms, etc.

Who gains from a massive, 1200-page piece of densely worded new law? Not you. Some lawyers do, because somebody has to explain all this to bewildered business owners and reassure them they’re not breaking the law. Bureaucrats do – now even more personal and economic freedom is under the thumb of mid-level government flunkies, with the power to shut you down and wreck your livelihood. Unless you’re paying off the right people or connected to the right politicians, of course. As always, the large and powerful (hello? GE?), will benefit over the small “mom-n-pop” outfit, regardless of industry, wherever this bill touches. And it touches everything.

And who loses? You. More freedom and more of your possessions, money etc., siphoned off by bland, smooth-faced politicians and their opportunistic enablers.

Notice I haven’t really touched on the particulars. Because it DOESN”T MATTER. This could be a bill ostensibly about almost anything – cap-n-trade, gov’t health care, “stimulus” spending, etc. Any bill, with over a thousand pages, rushed through before anyone voting on its passage could plausibly claim to have read it, is, pure-and-simple, another power grab and wealth-extraction vehicle, taking freedom and wealth from We The People, and transferring it to politicians, favored constituents and well-connected rent-seekers. It can be nothing else. Which is why those Congressfolks who vote YEA do so with little qualms. They haven’t read it. But they absolutely know what’s in it, that being an early, and non-voluntary Christmas present to them and theirs from me and you.